Ep. 641: 15 Years of Living Off the Land in Alaska

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You do know it's Wildlife Service, Oh, federof Fish Wildlife Service.

Oh, because that's where my brother works.

Yeah, that's why he Okay, Okay, I'm sorry about that. Uh that was Krins problem US Fish and Wildlife Service and that helps that. That's a good team too. How why Randy's here? Randy, my brother Danny, who works for the US Fish and Wildlife Service, has never once in his life made a recommendation of someone that should come

But man, oh man, oh man, the whole world, the whole quail.

World's very upset that he came on because they're like, it distracts from the main message of habitat. I disagree because he talked about habitat a whole bunch. But anyways, we're gonna have another quail. We're gonna have a better quail, not a better We're gonna have a different quail person on to explain why it's bad, and among other things, like it'll be like what real That episode will be

Yeah, I'm guessing that the ratio between the size of parts is gonna be.

Dude, I'm not doing a great job of articulating all of the consternation, because, yeah, a lot of consternation in the quail world. What was the world before we found was Remember we talked about there as the world, Oh, the beekeeping world.

Bee keepers get oh, very very particular.

And yeah, that was our first That was the first time we ever weighed in on the Bob white quail. So we're going to have a follow up episode about Bob white Quail and we're going to talk about that Bob whit Quail episode. Quick question from from uh to put to the people in the room. This is from a fellow named Christian. So he's check this out. What Statesian? New York? Oh, okay, he's in New York. He gets a this is a letter. He's thirty three years old.

I'm so curious about what her sanctuary looks like.

She signed off with best wishes.

And good started with good morning, and ended with best wishes.

Yeah, it seems pretty civil, but he's not moving on to her property.

He's on his prom he's not on it.

And it seems like she's been doing this kind of thing for a while before. You tell me not to text you again, right, Yeah, I think Joannis had.

The right approach. We talked about it earlier.

What's that laying on us?

Oh maybe just go pay her a visit with uh with the warden on your on your hip. And she hasn't done anything else to have a chat with her. Well, unless I don't know at what point it becomes hunter harassment.

A text this begins good morning and ends best wishes to a neighboring property is not harrassment. She didn't threaten them.

No, it wouldn't be in there going to like threaten to put her in jail. Just have the ward and give give her a little like education.

If this is all she's doing is sending texts like this, then Christians should just reply to her and say, hey, we're not going to go on your property. We're gonna continue hunting. We do everything by the law, et cetera, and it's over and done. But if it's a if there's something more than what we're seeing here, because we're getting just a little snippet of this world, then I would say go and pay her a visit for sure.

But I would think at this point, I feel, at this point it's like no one wants to get that text. But I mean, she's asking him to do something. He just would reply and say, I'm respectfully.

I mean, I respect.

My property, thank you very much.

I respect your I respect your private property, but I'm gonna use my property, uh, in accordance with the law, and I expect that you'll behave in accordance with the law. And sorry that we don't see eyed eye on this. And then have you seen any biggins?

It make you not want to hunt that border though, because you'd be all worried about a deer running.

If it runs onto her place. And he's only got he's only got thirty acres, So I mean, not only that's greats more than I got, but uh not Mortian he's got.

That's a nice chunk for a back east.

Well, I feel like Giannis has some uh experience here that most of us don't with the psychological burden that overbearing neighbor can put on you, that's right. So uh if there is more here, because it does, it just weighs on your like, oh yeah, every shot that goes off, I'm gonna get a text, every truck that comes up our driveway, I'm gonna get a text every you know.

That had that very similar situation around a raccoon.

So he's a scar. That's why he's ready to get He's ready to get the law. He's ready to throw down.

Yeah, if this lady's giving him heartburn.

It's like, here's an our listener question. So that's so so that my official answer. I mean, if I don't know, it sounds like from around the room, no Yoanni wants to get a game warning and go over there.

Yeah, to do a preemptive strike.

I like it.

Yeahan he proposes a preemptive strike, I propose, I propose saying sorry, we don't see eyed eye. I'm gonna I.

Can see just doing nothing.

Also, just go on with your definitely justifiable to do nothing. Yeah, definitely justifiable to do nothing. Yeah, that's totally fair. Here's another question, listener question. We got to talking recently about

Randy, does that apply when you're living out in the bush in Alaska?

Well, I'll tell you what. What we did is take moose ribs that had been boiled up so nice and soft, and I'd give it to the kids and hey, with chew on it, just like the dogs chill.

No meat.

Yeah, well there's some meat, not a bunch.

Yeah, you know, roughly what age.

Well, they were still riding in a back for me, okay. I I took him around with a jerry pack, no, you know, and they loved it. I had two hands to work with, and they had they got to look at everything.

Sitting back there nowing on ribs yep, and if.

They dropped them, the dogs would take them.

So this guy's wondering, he just shot a deer. Okay, he's a new father, so he had his first kid, shot his first deer with lead ammunition. And now he's wondering if if it's okay to have his kid and his wife eat it because he's worried about the lead.

If it's really weighing on them, just make the switch to copper. Bullets or tungsten shot or small game whatever like sure, so bugging you that much, but.

I would cut around it.

And I mean that's the main, the main thing we you know, the main thing we eat. Uh. I got a whole bag full of all the lead shot we pulled out of birds. Yeah. You know what I'm gonna do with that? Reload it?

No.

Woman. I was at this event, we did this book event, and a woman came and she had this pendant that was like a dish, like a dish, and it was full of all kinds of shot and I was admiring it. And it was all the shot from her first turkey. And they sent and her and her husband sent me a kit to make them. So I'm taking all the shot we've ever picked out all of our food, because I always put in a bag, and I'm making my

Does your wife knows she's getting this?

Oh, I've told her about ten times, as haven't made it yet. I got enough for two necklaces song, I have one for my wife, more for my daughter.

There was another person who wrote in about prechewed food. He says that his mom was a dentist and when he himself had a kid, his mom was like, no, no, no, don't do the prechewed food thing because or a dental hygienist, because she said cavity developed. I don't think. I don't think the logic is sound. But cavities developed because of bacteria. So if you take food and you chew it up and then you give it to your kid, that might increase their likelihood of developing cavities.

Because they're.

Going to fall out anywhere.

That's why I didn't put it in the notes because I thought that it didn't make any sense.

And there's nothing on your mom's mouth that isn't getting on.

You right exactly exactly. That's why I didn't include it.

But I thought, I think the food thing has been played out.

We need to move on well with that said, at least until we get another email or put it on a T shirt.

So Randy, what, uh, what drew you to Alaska?

Man?

Like, how'd you wind up? And where'd you grow up? And what drew you up there?

So I grew up in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and so that was southern rockies where my stomping crown. As a kid used to fish and you know, it was more like hunting for those little, uh little rainbows up in the headwaters. And uh and I just I don't know, I just wanted to I wanted to live out in the woods. I'd read some of these uh, you know books like The Big Sky and some other baby gothries and uh and I always felt like I was born about one hundred years too late. But but so so

Who's you milk cows?

For?

It was they had a few dairies up in that Palmer while Silla area just north of Anchorage that were partially subsidized by the state, and they never did They never did make it so they could compete with milk being shipped up from lower forty eight because they, I think, just with the cold and the inability to grow a lot of the grains, they had to ship grain up

It was pretty wild. They fed you, housed, you gave you seven hundred bucks, yep, and you milk two hundred cows. Yeah.

How long did that take?

Well, it was about four or five hours of milking, if I remember right, Milk them in the morning and then milk them in the evening.

And at this point you're eighteen years old, roughly I was eighteen.

And when you say you went to live in the woods, how's that even begin?

Like?

What like what.

So there was a buddy of mine that came up with me. He and I used to kick around in the mountains and winter camp and everything, and so so he and I had had picked out off of a map that we were going to go up onto the Tautontic River downstream from.

Eagle What what like? What year was this?

So it was nineteen seventy six, So.

Was the Homestead Act still in play?

There?

No? Okay, so the male jumping ahead, but so the deal.

There was a Homestead Act opening in the late sixties, I believe, and another one in seventy three. There have been some state land dispersals as well, but those two acts were before I ever got out there, and then the state gave away. They would have these land lotteries,

So too many people trying to draw from the same resource.

That's right.

Yeah, So out on the Yukon, people were you know, organized ten to twenty miles apart down the Yukon, up the side creeks, and so that was sufficient distance, you know, provided they could you know, establish trap lines in different places that they could make a living off the off of the country. There they weren't stepping on each other's toes.

So when you when you tried to pick a spot, how did you know? How did you know that you wouldn't be crowded in with other guys? Or didn't you?

We didn't. And in fact we went down to Tatonic River and there was a guy named Dick Cook who lived there and and Tatonic River. So so this is right up near the border with Canada, right where the Yukon comes in. There's a town of Eagle, it's got a road to it, and then Circle is downstream about one hundred and sixty miles and then there's several of these tributaries that are cannoeable and and so so Tatonic

Did you just.

Run into him or you knew he was in the area, or like, how do you make contact with him?

I made We made contact on the river. We were lining up the Tetonic River.

Oh to go establish the place to live.

Yeah, you're like, damn, there's a cabin here.

Well, we didn't see the cabin. He was downstream of that, but we pulled over. He was talking, well, he saw us on the way in and sky Charles was about six and a half feet tall and I was just about six and so. And so when we came back down, even though we realized we weren't going to be able to make a place there, we went up and explored around and fished and walked in the mountains and things. On our way back down, though, Dick was talking with

I'm aware that you had to run in with McPhee while he was writing coming into the country, right right, So you pull up and he's literally talking to John McPhee. Yeah, and John mcviee.

And John McFee dips his cup into the river and offers it to us, and we're like, we don't need that, we've been drinking the river. But because he was amazed that there was a river that was clean enough that you could drink out of, that's what it was.

And so he was, I.

Don't know, offering it to we would kneel down and drink water and whatever. But yeah, but but as it turns out Dick was. When John was with Dick, Dick was was looking at our tracks and he's telling He's telling John, Okay, well, you can tell one guy's really big, you know, because of the stride.

Lines and everything.

So John ended up what did he call Dick the Grand Swami of trackers or something like that. But but Dick never told him that he'd seen us before. So anyway, yeah, what a deal.

But so you're you're sort of in coming into the.

Country sort of, not really, but sort of. And uh, and then we headed back to Eagle because we didn't know what the heck we.

Were going to do.

And and when we were back there, there was a fire that was taking place on the Canadian side of the border, just uh north of the Yukon and and the Canadians and the US have have they have these these agreements, and so the BLM put the fire. They went out and and worked on that fire, and they hired me and Charles out there, and so we went and worked on a fire. And during that period of time I met this guy, Mike Potts. And Mike Potts

Was that his real name?

Yeah, Mike Potts. Do you ever hear John Colter? He's a mountain, He's a he's called the Yellowstone Colter's Hell. Yeah. Okay. He was over by where Seth lives in eighteen oh eight and he was with a guy and they got caught by the Blackfeet. And that guy's name is Mike Potts. Oh, and they caught Mike pots all up in little bits and smeared him all over John Colder and then Colter, and then they made Colter start running, and that was

Yeah. Well, so Mike Mike always well, he several times he had people come out to his trap line south of Eagle Back on the north fork of the forty mile and and help him do building projects or or haul meat and various other things. And so he invited me to go out there with him that that winner, and he had a dog team, had a couple of cabins and wanted help with hunting, and I went with him. Charles got involved with with gold mining.

He this is six and a half with Charles.

Yeah, yeah, and so and so he went gold mining and I went trapping, and it was kind of like an apprenticeship, you know, building cabins with moss, chinking and and which is a wonderful way to go, just with materials that you find out there in the woods, and then uh and then taking care of meat. And we went and ended up getting a bear and a big

Yeah, and he was using that moose fat as a frying medium or like for baking or what was he doing with the rendered moose fat?

Well, yes, it was it was too uh for frying, but it was also just to eat with your meat. And then there was cracklings that was left over and those were also So the deal with eating straight meat is you got to eat meat and fat, and we would use it that way. Sometimes we'd render as much as twelve gallons I think was the most we've rendered off a single big bull.

Damn.

That's kidney fat. Kidney's kidney fat that can fill a five gallon bucket once you take the kidney out jamming in there, and then all sorts of other fat in the intestines, the ribs, the brisk at the back.

So you were using primarily internal fat, not the external fat.

Not the back fat. Or he used the back fat too.

Did you have separate uses or was it all just one oil at the end of the day, one oil?

Okay? Got it?

And moose fat is hard, so you know when you if you take it at root temperature, it it'll crack.

Off in a chunk. You know.

It's not like butter or anything like that. You know, it just it breaks off in a solid chunk that you can throw in the frying pan, melt it out, fry the meat, and then when it starts cooling off, you can dip it and get a big swath of the fat on the on.

The meat so that then you take your thumbnail and scrape it off through for your mouth. There is that.

But but the good thing about moose fat is if you render it clean and decant it and pour it off into a bucket. It will keep through a summer, so you can have it without spoiling it. Bear fat, on the other hand, will go rancid if it's not kept very cold, so it's very different.

You know.

Bear fat is more of a of a liquid, almost liquid at room temperature, but it won't keep. You can't keep it for over over a summer. I mean you could if you had it in a freezer. We were dealing with whatever the temperature.

I feel like I've had to survive just in the pantry at the house for a year plus.

But it goes, it goes rancid. Yeah, my experience was it. Yeah, it went rancid, and then it becomes dog food because they don't care.

Sure, Sure, can you give You're talking about some pretty specific places on the map, and I think you're doing a good job for people that know that area of Alaska. Can you give just a little bit bigger of a geographical context, because I think Eagle sort of has like the jumping off point for a lot of people that went to do what you did, and just kind of where that lies and why it's there and why people that are drawn to that are drawn to Eagle I think that's important.

Well, yeah, so that's right at the border with Canada. I mean it's just like ten miles downstream of the border. And back in those days, anyway, that was after the Native Claimed Settlement Act and before Anilka, and so there was kind of a void and all all that a lot of the land in Alaska at that point was just sort of managed by b l M.

Didn't we do a podcast on that native Native claims and aspects of the Native Yeah, people are wondering.

Yeah, can I do it real quick?

Yeah, go for it and correct me where I'm wrong here. During it was during the Carter administration they finally they finalized a lot of it. But for a long time Alaska, a lot of the land in Alaska was in a sort of managerial limbo. That's correct, right, And it was they knew that that that that Native Alaskan tribes would would claim some and some things would become park but for a long time it was just in a in

Yeah, they discovered the so the Statehood Act laid out basic acreages of land that would become part of the state ownership versus federal ownership and uh and that there had to be some sort of native claim settlement, but it wasn't figured out. They didn't have it all sorted out on where it was going to be or or other things like that. There were some parks, you know, like the Dnale.

Was already there in the Arctic.

They called it National Wildlife Range and rather than a refuge and uh and that. So there's there's things that were already sorted out for the for the federal system when they when they found oil and they were looking for a way to get it south. They the Secretary of the Interior at the time is 'ed All and he he essentially stopped everything, put a hold on everything. And so that was the incentive to get the native land claims settled.

Right. God, if you're going to put.

A pipeline through, we better figure out what land it is.

As they goes like who's going to end up owning what right?

Yeah, And so so that took place, and and it also laid out the d two lands, which were the federal lands, conservation areas, refuges, parks, other things like that, not necessarily where they were or or how big each plot was going to be, but that there would be, uh, these parks and refuges in various places.

So in this area that we're talking about, like what Yanni asked bout, were basically where the Ukon River flows out of Yukon Territory into Alaska. At that time, in the seventies, a lot of people were moving into that area because.

You could just go live right, yeah, And it was So the deal was that BLM what I heard was BLM had gone up into the forty Mile country and gone down and burned two cabins they considered to be trespassed cabins, and they got taken to court over that.

And the legal.

Response was that they had to consider any cabin they thought was trespassed, they had to deal with it in the courts before they did anything with it.

They couldn't.

They had to treat it like private property. And so they were just like hands off we're not going to deal with it.

Got it.

And so there were people that went down onto the Yukon, and there were people doing this in a lot of different places, but that was where I knew about at the time, But.

But there was there.

It was sort of a you just had to kind of negotiate with neighbors, with other people that were living there for a place that wasn't going to step on somebody else's toes or interfere with their trap line. And that's what Dick did with us, you know, he said, you can't do it, you know, and we're thinking, Santa Fe time, we'll be at least a mile away. You did not, no twenty miles, you know.

So when you spent that, when you did that apprenticeship with the guy, did that lead you to find a place you could go set up in? Yeah?

So there was a He did it the year before with this guy named Little John, little John Gottio, and Little John was out there on the forty mile trapping had a different cabin that same winter that I went out and helped Mike. I helped him finish a cabin in the snow and then took care of We had a moose and a bear, and so I took care of those out of his main cabin while he went back and then came back out later in November or

Were you guys getting in by bush plane or were you like traveling by boat or like, how were you getting into this remote stuff?

How were you and Little John hanging out together? Weren't twenty miles apart.

It's doubling canoes and we were lining. We had no motors, yep, and so the winter dogs of course, Yeah, so little John had dogs. I didn't at the time, but I ended up getting a couple of puppies and h and off a litter and so and so when we started down to Yukon, though we had we had two canoes. He had a canoe and I had one. And we got down part way down and found out that nobody was living on the Candick River. Candiic River is a big, big tributary of the Yukon there between Eagle and Circle,

Your lining up process and what type of mileage could you make going upstream like that?

So, so lining is a process where you have about one hundred foot long rope and one ends tied to the front of the canoe, ones to the back canoe. They lining is more easily done if they got a little keel on the bottom. And so what you're doing is adjusting these two lines so that that canoe stays off shore and tries to stay parallel with the So a big gravel bar, you just walk up on the gravel and it's out in the water, pulling it along.

So are you kind of walking backwards when you're lying them?

No, it's not that much. Well, if you were hauling a moose, you might, yeah, not enough drag, not enough drag.

It just goes real smooth.

So by adjusting the two lengths of that rope. You're just adjusting the angle of the canoe, and that's it's basically faring in the current.

Yeah, you just have it, did it's straight out from you. You can just about yeah, yeah, just about yeah.

And so there's boulder fields on the Candic River, and so you could you it's if you got a keel, it's like power steering and you can go around between rocks and everything. So whereas if you don't have a keel, it kind of bumps against shore. It's doesn't go very well at all.

How many miles were you making on that big river?

You know, sometimes ten miles, more often.

Six or eight a day. Yeah, and you got so we get so.

I don't know if you know this, but when the Second World War came along, the government ended up when we got involved in it, they shut down materials that could be used for the war effort from going anywhere else. And all of the mines in Alaska, with a couple of exceptions, got shut down. And what people back in the thirties and early forties were doing is trapping in the winter and then working the mines in the summer.

I mean, from the people that were living there.

From the people that had lived them there, I see, And they wouldn't.

They wouldn't do anything.

They bring him in, but they wouldn't do anything with him.

So they throw him in a pile I see.

And they would last for a long time, and so I mean porcupines chew him and squirrels and things like that.

But but they they they were still there.

That it was a good sign because you and we thought, why go to the kaleen, We're going to come up here, and that's what we did.

And then when you were seeing all those antlers, it would show you where people had lived and also show you where places that might be good hunting exactly.

And in almost every case there was a thin area open lead or something in the Candic River that would for water in the winter. They were great places, dry dry spruce woods.

And and good water. And you found a guy that had starved to death, right.

I did, Yeah, Me and me and Fred we found him. He was that was.

Held where near a big pile of antlers.

He was not.

Well.

So so little John and I had gone up and we had built two cabins where most built two cabins. And then we went back to Eagle and got traps and things and and stoves, and we came back down and and Fred came with us and a couple other folks who were interested in having line cabins, just cabins, emergency cabins, you know, if you get wet, because these rivers that will overflow and sometimes you need to get past anyway, and so you get wet, and having a

Who's this guy?

This is the dead guy.

The dead guy eventually, sorry.

So eventually you knew this guy before he died.

I did not, but Fred had, Fred had seen him. Fred was this gregarious guy that lived at the mouth of the Candic and a lot of different people would come in there. There was a slew that you could catch pike and and things, and so everybody had it on their on their on their maps, you know, they would go in there, and he would go over and trade things, you know, a beaver hide for a sleeping bag or various things like this, and and uh. And one year this guy that that we called Smigel, he

You just got to wonder how much background have you have you tried to do any background, like the ditching the partner? Is that bad character of which one?

Yeah, who was the who was the who was the sort of dick you know exactly? I have no idea, I have no idea.

But but this guy wandered down and he didn't know Fredwich Baptists on the Baptist Yeah, wandered down to uh and this is like early September. He wandered down to the mouth of the Candy and saw that there was somebody in this cabin across the slough. And Fred came over and got him. And Fred was always like, you know, happy with the system, you know, and always wanted to

Me just so unclear, like he had a sweet setup and he shared he'd want to share, right, yeah, yeah, like I catch pike here, I do this there, yeah, okay.

And and he was not very ambitious, so he only he might get a Lynx or two, you know, in in Trapping or in eight or ten Martin, and you know that would be enough for him.

He just didn't. He wasn't very ambitious.

And so you know, a very ambitious guy out there, tho, it's gotta be fairly ambitious.

Maybe he didn't build the cabin they called it. Morris's I always going back? Yeah, but but anyway, he he he decided that he was going to go back east that fall and he told he told this guy that he had to catch a ride or build a raft and go to Circle. They couldn't stay there, but the guy stayed and Fred got a ride. There was a there was a barge called the Brainstorm that ran out of Circle and it would go up to Eagle and Dawson.

I got I got interrupted discover I got lost from it. So Fred, So Fred's living there. Yeah, and okay, let's just stick with just calling him Smiegel. Fred's living there. Smiegel comes down, Sniegel's been abandoned by his buddy. Yeah.

Now, now who says they're going back? They got to go east?

Fred is Fred had his plan to go back east. So he had he had a bunch of food stored.

Oh, and he says. But he says, you can't stay here at my house.

You can't stay at my house. You have to find a ride to Circle.

And get out of here. I'm gonna be gone. I'm gonna be out of town. And when I'm out of town, I don't want you here eating my food. That's right, got it? And about that?

And Fred got to town by by hailing this barge. The barge would pick people up. I mean, it was a big enough barge. It could haul like a dump truck, you know, on its deck and building materials and things. And it would go down and go to fort Yukon and then up to okro on the Porcupine in Canada. But that was that barge's route, right and the and the road that would you know, where supplies were loaded

In November. Yeah, in November, not ambitious. Well he knew how to do. You're not ambitious.

Let me tell you what.

I'm a picture.

So he gets down almost of the Candic River when the river is just jamming up a little too much for even him, and he pulls his canoe out, walks to his cabin and it's about twenty below and Smiegel has moved his lamp and his sleeping gear to this cabin up at three mile, three miles farther up, and Fred was he was pissed. And then he left a note on the door, I'm up at three mile cabin John the Baptist, you know. And so and so Fred goes up there and this guy, this guy has been

You're like, this one's good for grouse, this one might might take down a moose maybe.

Yeah.

So so so anyway, I had left my snow shoes. I had store bought snow shoes, but I left them down there because I wanted to. I wanted to build a pair, and I knew that if I had a store bought pair, I wouldn't right, And so I had left a pair down there and built a new set. And but anyway, Fred fred is Bread is pissed off at this guy. Fred used to grow pot on the roof of his that cabin. He would he would throw dog shit up there, and then he would throw seeds.

What it wasn't good weed?

No, like not for the area, good weed or not good weed just can't be choosers.

Kind of weed.

It It would give you a headache more than it would give you a high. But anyway, this guy had smoked all his pot too.

He was living high on the hog while you guys are gone.

And Fred got pissed about that, and he says it wasn't any good stick around anyway. Fred says, you got to go circle or eagle after it freezes up. You got to go because I'm going to kill you otherwise, right and so and so this guy says, I'm not going either. I'm going to chalk Keatsick. So chalck Keatsick is on the Black River flowing down into the Porcupine and and it's a long ways north from the Candic River.

I had so I I freaking dart too.

I was, Yeah, I was staying in this cabin above Johnson Gorge, so about thirty miles up the river. And and so I would line a canoe up there and spend the winter. But there was a pass you could go over some mountains and down to the Yukon, and I preferred to do that and run the river because the river would would overflow and then your trail would be gone and things. If you could, you know, get to a place that it was all water.

So I came.

Down flow, meaning that you get water flowing on top of the ice.

That's right.

Yeah. So so once a river freezes over, you get snow on it. Sometimes the flow is enough that it it doesn't have enough room underneath the ice as it starts thickening up weight on it and things, and it'll seep up into the snow over the ice and then it's it's it's slush for a while until it reaches the surface and refreezes, you know. But anyway, so I had come down over this pass and come down to get my snow shoes because the ones I built I broke and I had to splice them or anyway I

Where is megel?

Well, we all we all knew from being out there that you can't make a living with a twenty two pistol in the winter. You might shoot a grouse or a squirrel or something like that here or there, but you can't feed yourself that way. And he didn't have enough food to start with.

Someone tells me his buddy had a reason to abandon him after hearing this story.

I think maybe. So. Yeah, we've honed in on who's the dick? Yeah, I think maybe so.

So just to pause here for a second. Again, it became a topic amongst everybody on the river. What I imagine this is mostly in your heads with little bits of being together, because keep in mind, right now we're in the days of instant gratification point being right there, cell phones, text messages.

Yeah right, Hey, sorry about that.

Well that's over here.

Oh it is.

I should put mine on airplane too.

So yeah, Phil will tell you not to have that thing on the table either, Okay, yeah, get interference sometimes there.

I'm gonna turn it off. Ye.

Yeah, you're doing great. Large preamble just to ask how often are you all getting together to have conversations in person?

Hey, we had good dog teams. Okay, we cruised around and h and we did talk, and we did have big gatherings up there, you know, Christmas, New Year's and various other things. No, we we talked a lot. Okay, there'd be people traveling just to say hi or to share some meat or or whatever. But there was discussion. Everybody uniformly said there's no way he can make it to Chalikisik. But there were those that said he probably waved somebody down an airplane, but we didn't have hardly

Tracks, you know.

It's living out in the woods in the snow country. You're always looking at tracks. There's nothing that gets by you tracks. And so we were like, nah, he's got to be dead, you know. And so the next spring. So so the Candic River is great in the fall, has lots of moose and other you know, bears and things like that. But in the springtime the Yukon is the place to be because there's the flyway, you know, you get all the waterfowl coming into Alaska's going by there.

They'll drain all.

Their snow really early in March sometimes and you get all this new growth coming out, even though everywhere else, you know, there's still three feet of snow laying around and the bears would come out early there. So it was the Yukon was the place to be in the spring feeding yourself. And so that left me with my canoe up at my upper place at thirty miles up, and so I would have to walk the ridge and down and then canoe down to get my canoe back in the spring. So that's what me and Fred did.

You know.

He came around and I say, Fred, somem eagel's here and he's not alive. And we get up there, and he knew he wasn't alive. Well, he couldn't have been alive. We didn't have any food.

There, and the snowshoes were still there.

And the snow shoes were there. He didn't walk away, and so we get up there. We got five dogs, Okay I had three and Spread had two at that time, all in the canoe with you no, they're running the pad.

Oh, I see, okay, they're just keeping up. Yeah.

And so we get there and walk up to the cabin and the dogs are all running around, you know, and they are just really they they focus on dead things, right, they really like you know, if you shoot a bear out of a tree or get a moose, you know, they want to be there. It's just like that's the thing of interest. So so so I opened the door, and of course I knock on it, just in case. But and and there's this sleeping bag on the bunk.

He was he's in his bag. Yeah, he's in his bag.

And so we we took him out in Fred's bag, Fred's bag, and and uh and it was it was he was so skinny as his eyes were sunken into his face, and and we took his clothes off because we just wanted to see what had happened there. And he was seriously skin on bone.

There was no meat.

He had starved out and h and the twenty two was hanging on a nail in the back wall. And so he definitely didn't kill himself. And and the dogs they were like twenty feet away looking the other way. They wanted nothing to do with this. Wow, you can see their ears are turned back to us, so they were paying attention, but they didn't want to be anywhere

How long at that point, how long you think he'd been dead?

I really don't know. Was he froze he had been frozen, but he was thought then and hair was starting to slip on his forehead, but he didn't smell rotten, and and so and so we were thinking, what do we do with this guy? You know, we don't have a shovel, the ground's still frozen. We can't bury him. Do we try to take him somewhere? Do we take him to Circle? That would be at least a three or four day

So something did you guys eventually get word out to like some authority.

We told people that there wasn't anything anybody could do. We didn't know who he was.

As far as you know, has he ever been identified?

I have no idea.

Probably probably a lot of people.

That happened to a lot of people up there.

Yeah, yeah, I don't think he was out there because he wanted to stay in touch with his family.

Right, So we should probably skip forward to what a fellow does when he gets lonely and he figures he's gonna need a companion out in this life. Could on this, Yeah, because otherwise we are going to be here all day, which is fine with me. I'll just cancel a couple upcoming calls.

Yeah, no, I mean that's that's amazing. I mean, if you guys thought about it that much, I think it's longer than I I would have thought about it. It would have been like, well, hopefully at twenty two isn't rusted.

Oh yeah, we used the sleeping bag.

Fred took the sleeping bag.

No, yeah, you got your snowshoes.

I got my snow shoes.

I was just thinking too, like, if he was that emaciated, had you guys found him alive, probably wouldn't be anything you could have done for him.

I think that would be hard. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Where did you wind up? You eventually found your territory? So did your whole time in the bush wind up being in this river system that you're talking about now? Yeah? Okay, yeah, and eventually got to where it like Johannie was saying, eventually got to where you wanted a companion.

That's absolutely true.

The dogs weren't cutting it.

Dogs weren't cutting it. Well, they were great, but it wasn't the same. Yeah. Yeah, and uh, and I wasn't running into uh, single women out there?

How many How many years have you been doing it before you decided ahead into the Fairbanks?

I think? Uh? I think three? Okay, so you're still young. Yeah.

Were there some couples out there or was it mostly single men doing this thing?

No?

There were couples out there. There were, yeah, yeah, most most of the other people out there were couples. Oh I see, yeah? They would they your third wheel? Well not really. I wasn't there. I was the one wheel.

When you say most of the people out there, like, how many people were we talking about?

There were about twenty people or so that lived between uh, Eagle and Circle, okay, yeah. And how many miles it verid one hundred and sixty miles okay, yeah.

And how often would you see like, how long would you go without seeing people?

Well, so when I was up the Candy it would be months.

Oh really yeah.

Yeah, my father he came out to visit the first year that I was out there, that I spent on the Candic River, so I'd been out on the North Fork at forty mile. And it was funny because he was he was working for park Service. He got he was a historian down in Southwest Region out of Santa Fe for a while, and then he got offered a job in Alaska to deal with the d two Lands, which became the Parklands. He was park Service, so that's

That your dad ended up like right in.

Near you, So I didn't I had no idea he was there. But when Little John and I had gone up and gotten the traps everything we were, we were at our canoes ready to shove off, and my dad pulls up right and he says, he says, Randy, where are you at now? I said, well, up in Indian Grave Creek. That's one of the tributaries of the Candick. And and I was sixty miles up the Candick and that was the cabin I was going to be staying in. And he says, he says, I'm going to come and

On a lake beside the Yukon.

So he came up to get me, and I said, I said, I can't, I can't go. What if my dad comes, He says, he's not going to come, that's you know, how's he going to get up.

Here, you know?

And I said, it would be horrible if he came and I wasn't here.

So I stayed.

I was getting caribou, and I was the only one getting caribou out there at the time.

And so.

Little John leaves and goes over to this party, and and I'm hauling caribou in from a place that I had gotten a few and at the time, the the limit was no more than ten a day, no more than no more than ten a day. And and so anyway I'm hauling. I'm hauling this caribou back and uh with the dogs. And I hear this airplane come in

So he's got you have salt. I had salt.

And and so so he has he has Copenhagen because he'd been a smoker pretty much all all his life that I had known him. And uh, so he has Copenhagen there to try to ease things up. Well, he had he had a few different things he was dealing with. One and you know, they eating just meat and uh, and all I would do is fry it in a pan and then eat right out of the pan and and uh and then go dip.

Buckets of water. So I had. I had water and meat and fat. That's what I was eating.

And then for light, I had a moose fat candle, you know, an old like a tuna fish can with a with a bent piece in it and a bit of old levi as the wick. And you'd have to set it on a stove. You'd have to set it on the stove to melt it, and then you could light it and it would keep going mostly and uh and give off just a candle a candle light. So

But when people do that move, when they do the when they do like the they're going to quit something, yeah, and they're gonna be like, well, I'm gonna take advantage of this remote or out of the country thing. Yeah, they never fixed, but they never they never factor.

In the people that are around them.

Yeah, I know.

And then they going like, well, I decided I'm gonna quit drinking. Yeah, you know, I'm gonna quit smoking while you and me are away from that.

I just talked to an outfitter who they had to fly a guy out really yeah, dts because he's like, this is the perfect opportunity for me to stop drinking.

Yeah exactly.

Yeah.

Yeah, So I bet those cookies your dad brought were good. Oh, we finished them immediately. Up, I had, I had, you know, I was adapted to the meat at that point in time to just meet. But I still enjoyed some other things, you know, And so yeah, I gobbled him down.

Did you ever lose your salt tolerance? Like, did you ever lose did you ever get to the point where you didn't even want salt on the meat? No, you just wanted it salted. Yeah, I like it salted.

Have you read Stephenson's My Life with the Eskimo?

Absolutely? Yeah. When they would go when they would go into these in with these groups and with these Eskimo hunting, they would find it to keep your supplies from getting diminished, they would salt everything because they hated salt. Oh, that was a protective measure against him. Yeah, so you'd have your stash of food, right, they would just salt it. Yeah, and then no one would touch it because they salted it because they had They didn't do they didn't do dietary salt.

Eskimo didn't.

No, he says, if you salted meat, they don't want nothing to do with it.

Don't you think they were getting salt from seal fat.

And they weren't using it. They weren't using it as a seasoning. You know, if you eat a fish out of the ocean, he's not salty.

No, but right, just your body chemistry, don't you need like a certain amount of yeah?

Right, So he mentions it like multiple times that just they don't want salt, and then he he eventually arrived. Stephenson arrives at a point because he has to go without for months and months they run out of salt. He goes months about salt eventually and then gets where it ruins it for him. He doesn't want any kind of salt on his food, and he talks about it being like a it's a learned that that eating all

That's what he says. He was wrong about a few things.

So he did mention that that they considered polar bear liver to be toxic, that you couldn't.

Eat it without toxic amounts of vitamin A. Yeah, that's a widely held belief. Is that not true?

I think it is true, so, but it's also true for grizzlies. So me and little Giant at one point, after eating tried moosse meat for a week, we ended up getting a grizzly and and cut him up, and we're frying heart, liver, and kidney in a full panload, and we both got headaches that just pounded us for a couple of days.

We couldn't get up.

And I think it was vitamin A poisoning, no kidding, Yeah, And so I think that it's not just polar bear, but it's the predator livers.

Did you get that grizz with the two forty three?

Yeah, yeah, that was your gun. Huh yeah, yeah, talk about I'm not trying to move you along. I'm just curious. How old are you when you decided that I'm going to make a go of it and I need a wife and kids. Well, so.

I must have been I must have been twenty or twenty one when I decided I was going to make a concerted effort to find a woman. I So I built a raft and I floated down to Circle and I hitchhiked into Fairbanks. I had been at the university for one semester, so I knew there was these personal things, so I left a personal note on there. I don't know exactly what it says right now, but it was something about it traffic.

You made a raft go to circle hitchhike the Fairbanks and then make it like a like a little flyer for yourself.

Yeah, with a little tear offf to advertising.

No, there were no tear offf taps.

Yeah, no, that was my first attempt.

Oh you know, you know what's the.

Cutest thing in the world is uh uh Paul's daughter Paul and Jen's daughter Brooke at the Mediator store downtown. She's got a tear OFFF tab.

That was bummed dear dad.

Only one thing was tore off, So I don't know if it was there that long I was.

Gonna tear a couple. Maybe it was just to make it look a little hotter.

Well, maybe that's representative of folks not killing stuff walking into the Mediator store.

Well, could be that, or it could be that the social media is her preferred mode too. Yeah, he make an ad say so.

Not only that, but I had a dog with me and a rifle, so I had a double strap rifle, right and just because then it's like a little backpack. I gotcha, And that's how I carry my rifle to this day. And then the dog had a dog pack, and so what we did is we would walk down the road and I would shoot. It was big rabbit year then, and I would shoot rabbits on the road

And what's a download?

Like a bird shot load type of deals. He was using the ticking for wadding.

Is that right?

That's right, so you you're not putting near as much powder in and so it's a slower so it's a bullet that's not gonna I mean we did that for squirrels and grouse too. You know, we used full metal jacket in two forty three.

And you just stuff the exit, you just fill the excess space was down, Yeah, because if.

It's laying there and the powder is just spread across the bottom, it can they say it can? It can back back pressure? Okay, But but Dick had not kept trying. This is a smiegel, you know, with all his things. That's what we would have run into if we just started using those. But he had assured me. Dick had assured me that these were all big loads, which they weren't. So this ram gets up on his back legs. I don't know how he got up and ran on two legs over the edge, and Dick ended up dispatching.

Him down the hill a little bit.

But but but that was that was a crazy situation there. But but then I got in my raft again after after we had come down off of the mountains.

Dick, how long? How long was the sheep hunt? One day?

I got to tell you, this is the most interested I've been in getting the lady story in a long time.

And meanwhile you've set your trap. You baited the trap with this note.

Yeah, I never got any. My male address was Poba General Delivery Eagle, right, and I never got anything. So that was a failed What did the note say, though, trapper living up on the Yukon is uh seeking a woman? I think something like that.

Nothing about any kind of criteria young and handsome trapper?

Yeah, he said, yeah.

Twenty one years old.

You didn't put anything about like like, you didn't put down any parameters that you were hoping to like achieve here, I did not. No, did you put your age down?

I don't think I did. I think See, it was a failed attempt. Okay, it was my first attempt. But it was a failed attempt.

Let's hear about the successful one.

So so I went in again the next summer and so but but there's a there's a problem, you know, to get to to have a develop a relationship. You know, I was going to have to move into Fairbanks and get a job and and everything and then.

And and I just couldn't do that.

You know, you're going to miss you know, the King Salmon Sea's in, you were going to miss and miss the moose season. You're gonna you know, it doesn't work. So so I went in and happened to be there during the Solstice Fair. They have a big party on Solstice every year. And and Karen, my my wife of forty three years right now, was sitting taking care of somebody else's dog and in front of a live music band, and so I sawn Heed over there and we struck

Whole thing watching a dog at a music music thing. Yeah, but back then hippies were kind of hard, like.

They'd go live in the woods, different.

Than there's still plenty of them in Alaska. I called it's the hippie redneck of Alaska. They're rough and tough, but kind of hippies at the same time.

Yeah, I suppose I didn't.

I didn't if they were hippies, I don't see anything wrong with them. They were great people that lived out there and high functioning, doing a lot of different stuff. Sure, man, I mean taking care of dogs and putting up food for the winter and dealing with salmon, and building cabins and traveling all over.

Yeah, it was. It was a high functioning group. When you met her, how like, how abruptly did you lay out what the what the proposal was?

Oh, within a couple hours.

And yeah, he said he's got one day to make a decision, right.

Well, and she says, I'm not going to go bed. Give me where do I write you? So she would write me, and then and then the postmaster in Eagle would would give these letters to people to go down river, and so I would get a letter from somebody when I was down on the Yukon. And of course I

So so get this.

I've got a beaver coat and moose hide pants, mucklucks with beaver tops to him, beaver mittens, and hat. And I get on an Alaska Airlines jet out of Fairbanks and they take me just like that down to Anchorage, right and my dad meets me down there and he's like, Jesus Christ, Randy, you can't dress like this in the city. So he takes me out and gets me new clothes and boots and stuff like that. And so I met her though at her airplane, and I had a ticket

I don't want to diverge from your love story. But when you got to San Francisco, was it like holy shit, culture shock kind of thing?

Oh?

Yes, I mean I'd grown up in Santa Fe, you know, so I mean, I mean it isn't like San Francisco, but yeah, no, it's it was, Yeah, it was. It was culture shock. She took me to New York one time because she grew up back on the East Coast, and I'm like, oh, that's Martin. Oh, that's you know, muskrat, there's you know, a fox Burg, you know, all these different fur.

Coats that people were wearing.

And and I also said, don't let go of me because I don't think I could make it out of here. And so anyway, we've had a lot of great adventures. But but I did go down there with her and we got married the next year out on the river.

That's awesome. So and you've been you've been together how long? Forty three years?

And when you got married, did she move up on the river with you?

She did?

And uh, And I took her to one of our cabins that was about a nine y ten cabin and showed it to her, thinking, this is there here, it is this is the place, and she's going, I don't really think this is a good place for me. But we'd already been married, okay, and so and so I says, Or we can go up river a mile or so, and there's this old cabin that was there, and we could build a new one.

And that's what we did.

And we built the biggest cabin that was out there on the river.

At that point.

How big was it?

It was eighteen feet square inside. Oh yeah, and two story. Oh well, it wasn't full two story. It was a two thirds loft.

Yeah, mansion. It was a big one. Were you peeling those logs? Just leaving them and let letting the bark fall off? Eventually I left them. They were dry trees though, oh like fire killed trees or no, they weren't fire killed. It was a big grove of spruce tree that was growing along the Cantic River, and there was a there was a green swath that was maybe fifty yards in width, and then there was a dead one and I think the primafrost just came in underneath them and killed him. Oh I see.

But they were big, big trees, big dry trees, all of them. So firewood was not a problem ever.

At that point, were you build them with a chainsaw or all hand tools?

I both saw on an axe and a two inch ogger for pegged work. No, I didn't have a chainsaw for a long time.

Were you moving them on the snow or how are you transporting big logs like that? And eighteen foot? What's the diameter?

They were twenty feet long and the big ones were probably twelve inches at the butt and uh, you know, nine or ten at the small end.

They're real uniform. I just would grab them and haul them in. Yeah, there you go. You know, like normally, if you're married, it'd be you know, like you might get in the big old fight about I don't know, like oh we should stay home this Christmas or no, we should go to so and so's this Christmas, And that might be like a thing. Yeah, as you we're

No, it really wasn't. I think the biggest tension initially was when we were leaving Eagle with our supplies in our double end canoe, getting ready to go up the Candic for the winter. Karen came up with this industrial sized box of toilet paper. Okay, And I'm like, we can't fit that, Karen, we can't fit it. She cause it goes all or I stay. And so laid it right out. She laid it right out. I says, there's moss, Karen, and she goes, not going to use it. This toilet

I didn't use it.

She did, but but uh, but she she she made her position known. So so we went out into the woods and built that place and stayed there a couple of years, and then she wanted to go and teach again. So we went together out to Uh. In that case, it was Chivak out on the Yukon Delta, and and that that one didn't pan out very well because they

Beautiful place. And we were there for a couple of years. And then did you set up and trap there too? Then?

No, I hunted, but I didn't trap. I hunted and I fished. I put gillnets under the ice down there and would catch twenty or thirty of these great, big humpback whitefish and some lake trout virtually every night in non Dalton once the lake froze up. And so the town folks in the town there would come down with these sleds because they knew I was using it for dog food, so they would trade dried sock ice for fresh whitefish. And we did that all winter for two years.

It was wonderful. And you were making no cash money at that point, none you personally yeah. None.

I did build my first birch bark canoe there though, in Nondalton, just for fun in the teacher's housing.

Yeah. Well yeah, yeah, to learn to do it.

I wanted to learn to do it.

Yeah.

And so these three, these three old guys there would when they heard I was I was starting to build this, they knocked on my door and I opened it. They walk in, took seats, and they would sit there pretty much every day and just watch everye Once in a while they'd say something about how they used to do it. But but nobody had been making making birch bark canoes up there in the old ways since about the sometime

Makes it more like a fiberglass or something. Yeah.

Yeah, And and like straw in Adobe's and things like that, Yeah, holds it together.

Did you continue to use that skill in your lifetime.

I built I think eleven or twelve birch bark canoes. You're shipping me really, yeah, at the Baskin style once, I like, I built two Eastern style, but the Athabaskan style is a little different construction. And so I just thought, we're in Alaska, we'll do them next way.

Yeah. Damn. Well, at this point you've gone to school one semester. Yeah that's true. So why did you like, so you're how how educated are you now? I mean you got a lot of school now, a lot of school. I've got a graduate school, yeah I did.

And that was so that was really one of the more traumatic things was moving into town. Traumatic things for me. So so we went back let me, let me please, So we went back.

In the woods.

We we we went out a couple of times when Caroen taught in Eagle and and for a little bit, and I would go out on trapline then. But but at one point, you know that remember the Native Claims Settlement Act happened, and Nilka happened, and and and all of a sudden, you know, people were there was a there was a desire to start claiming land or getting

The tribal corporation.

Did, yeah, yeah, the corp yeah, Douyan Native Corporation and so but we were getting ready to go anyway because we had one dog team and it couldn't take all of us on a big trip into Eagle or to visit other people. So so you know, we had like five or six dogs at that time, great big one hundred pound, hundred and twenty pound huskies. There were wonderful animals.

They can't move all that fish.

Can't move the fish.

You know, if you you live on the Yukon, that was a that was a resource that people used, but we didn't. And so I wasn't willing to go and try to manage a couple of dog teams. How would we even go along the river? You know, as these guys already ran the banks and uh and you know the Yukon. We would run them for a while until they got tired and then throw them in the canoe and they would you know, we could manage it that way, but uh, it just wasn't going to work.

And so we were getting do you have no fishing on your on your river? No char or grayling?

Or there were grayling, there were grayling, there were suckers along those suckers, there were you know, round white fish. There were a few species. But you couldn't feed her dog team with him. You know, you might feed them overnight. You know, in the lower part of the river there were Northern Pike, not in.

The upper part of the river. They didn't go up there. Anyway.

We were we were we were getting ready to go anyway. And so we just asked for a year leeway from Doyon so that we could come in with a ski plane and move some things and take care of the cabin so it wouldn't be a trash pile at some point. So so they they granted that to us, and uh, and then we went into Fairbanks and that was I hadn't worked a job since I was in high school, well the milking the cows period, you know, just out of high school. And and Karen had she she was

Yeah?

No, And there was this one log yard and I thought, well, I'd do log stuff, and so I walked over there and asked if there was any work. And this guy has these giant logs, you know that big, big scribe log houses get built out of, you know, forty fifty feet long, you know, and dirt and bark and stobs and everything. I'll give you ten dollars a log for peeling,

You know. And I had a gig for a while doing those logs, and it was I feel like it was thirty cents a foot. Yeah that's what we get paid. Yeah, that's a miserable job. Man. Yeah.

I peeled a lot of logs, and when it's your own, you know, it's just one thing. But peeling them for ten bucks a log. So so then I I said, I'm going to go to college. And so I went back to college.

Walked up, walked over there.

Yeah yeah, and uh and and so I had I had one semester of credits and and and and went there and was going to go into biology because I thought, if there's anything I can do, it's it's these some job in biology where they go out in the field and do stuff, you know, because we met we met people out on the Yukon taking care of peregrines. We met people that were doing fisheries work or forestry work, and we thought I can do that. That would be something like.

Oh, you'd run into professionals out doing their jobs.

That's right, yeah, yeah, and so and so that's what that's what I did. And and my first job was with BLM, a seasonal job. This gal, Randy Chant, who was a biology biologist with BLM, was doing waterfowl brood surveys and wanted to hire somebody to be able to do that. But they had to know the birds, and and I knew all the birds, all of the ducks and the geese and everything. You could see him from

No problem.

She's gonna be okay, well you might work. And they were really nervous because here's this guy, I don't know how old I was, thirty three or something like that, and didn't have a job since he was a teenager.

You know.

It made him a little bit nervous.

But they.

They they took the chance and and so I was going to college in the in the winters and then working for her doing waterfowl brood surveys. I started to do fisheries work with BLM and and finished bachelor's degree

Did you kind of like, did you fall into the fisheries thing or was that something you were like interested in and wanted to hone in on yourself?

That was really opportunistic. So in my undergraduate work, I had done mammalogy and ornithology and I did fish biology. You know, there were these different but I had also done microbiology and genetics and I liked them all. Sell biology, I thought that they were all pretty fascinating. And did

Can you describe a shefish for people that don't know what they are?

She fish are a great, big fish eating whitefish, and there can be as much as thirty forty pounds or more and well over a meter long, and they're there are a really great fish.

So the tarpin and a whitefish had sex.

Right exactly. It's kind of like that, And.

Not that I've ever caught on. They just been described to me.

Yeah, I think that tarpin give a much more profound fight than shefish do. But shefish are, they're a wonderful fish.

When you got into this work and got into school and all that, like did the whole time that you know that you were real bright, like that you had like a book learning ability. I mean, you had to felt so fairal and wild right, Well, there is that, But like to come back to it, were you surprised to be like, oh, I can be in these classes and get a's on my tests and write papers well, or did you feel that that was there all along? I didn't really know.

So there were several of my friends told me, there's no way you're going to keep up with these, you know, lighteen early twenties test staking machines, you know, yeah, and and but I ignored it, and I did just fine.

My dad hung out with this. My dad was fought World War two in a love of his bodies were all World War two guys. And there's a guy who lived across like across our lake and then over this Isthmus and across the next lake. And he had been a pilot during World War two, but he was kept in a pow camp. He got shot down, was kept in a pow camp. You know, the famous aviator Charles Lindbergh. Yeah,

Yeah, I suppose that's that's true.

I don't know it.

Uh, it was a wild time, but it was it was really hard to to come to grasp uh the the the change coming into town, and I struggled for a while trying to figure out what what the hell am I going to do?

Yeah, because you're living like you're living like kill a rab eat it, yeah, catch something slid, cut a tree down, make a house. You're playing. Yeah, I also been playing this like long game, like oh, if I do this for four years, I'll get like a tech position, and then maybe I'll get like a job.

And the things that you have to do in school right where you're like, Okay, I know this doesn't matter.

Yeah, but I ever asked me this as long.

As whereas like jump back to last year, if you didn't do what mattered, bad things goulda happen.

Yeah.

Yeah, but I imagine just doing homework wasn't necessarily what the challenge or what the irk was, right, Like, what was the biggest thing that you sort of that you had to come to grips with or face head on when you made the change, like just in general in life, Like what was it that confronted you that really made it difficult.

That That's a that's a good question, I guess you know that that had been my identity for so long being out in the woods. Coming in it was like struggling. And our older boy he struggled with it too, did he? Oh, yeah, yeah he did, and he just saw himself as being the woods person that that he was and.

He got over it.

Although he see he's he he teaches. He teaches applied math at University color Colorado, Boulder, right. And on his web page it says Jed Brown was born and raised by wolves in the Alaska wilderness.

You know, so he.

So he he he encompasses that. He likes it and uh and likes that. That was what he did for the first pretty much eight years.

Of his life.

And he's still we he and I had gone out sheep on inden and things for several times, and uh, that's all really fun. Yeah, I guess, you know, when I when I realized that if I'm going to get into a job that I'm going to like I got to go through this the university. And once I kind of came to grips with that, I just I would just go there.

I just do it.

And and it wasn't all that hard. It was just I mean, there was time element to it.

But was it tough being around people all the time, going from like not seeing people for months to being around people every single day.

I don't.

I don't really, that's probably probably true. That's not something that I remember as as a as an issue.

Though, gotcha, I did.

We did get a place that was kind of, you know, kind of by itself and there was woods around it and I really liked that, and we had a bird feeder right outside of the this window, and so so I would it was definitely a good place for me because I would come and decompress if there was decompressing to do.

So was it was it all fisheries research after that first job at the fish Wheel?

Yeah, So I got into the I got into the the honors program as as an undergraduate, and in the honors program, I did work out in Cole Bay, I did a small mammal survey following after Murray's worked in the nineteen twenties, and that that got put into what they call an honors thesis. The honors program paid my way, essentially, they paid my tuition and which was a good thing. But it also there were classes you had to take in that that were I don't.

Know, maybe maybe.

A little more philosophy, and anyway, it was, it was, it was a good thing. And and so once I went, once I got into that fish job, though I've had that same job the whole time. I mean I wasn't hired permanent initially it was it was a technician.

But the sheefish work.

There was a fell at John Burr that worked with Fish and Game Department at the time, and he came by to see it us at work down there, and he said, you guys really should do something with these sheepish. We've been working to try to figure out where they go and where they came from for a long time. And we were doing telemetry work with the chump salmon as well, not only the spaghetti tagging, but a telemetry

I don't know. No one knew what the hell they did. Nobody did.

And like in brackish water like a high saltwater content.

Yeah really, yeah, I didn't know that.

Yeah yeah, and uh and and those they go down their feed all winter, whereas there was a lot of them since then, you know, telemetry programs with with the sheefish, a lot of them just sit in the Yukon. And I have this vision of them with their spectral fins in the gravel and their mouths open facing up river and just spending the winter that.

Way, not feeding, just feeding, sit dormant.

Yeah, yeah, and so so that was that's one of the one of the papers that I just sent off to a journal. We'll see how they how they accept it, you know, they sent it out to review and and everything. But but I think it's it's an important piece because not all the populations do that, you know, spawning populations of the shefish. They some of them don't go to sea and some of them do and why who knows.

That's cool, man.

Yeah, So so yeah, I got PhD.

So to speak more or less, Uh, I got another question for you about the living in the bush versus coming into societ when you're on the bush like I'm trying to think of how to put this. You know, being alive now in today's atmosphere, you become very aware of all the cultural conversations, right and you become aware of like how you who you identify as? You know, you're like, Okay, I identify as, you know, an American, identify as a member of my family. I identify as

Jemmy, Like do you feel like.

Like, well, I'm an American, you know, or like where do you land at what you are? M m hmmm? Do you are you a.

Community member of the Yukon?

Like?

Like what it sort of And if someone says like who are you? Like what are you?

What? What would you have said you mean now, no, no, sorry when you were living in the bush, Like, what would you have said if someone asked you sort of explain yourself to me? You'ro what. Yeah, I it was.

It was much more as a as a resident of the of the Woods.

Yeah. Yeah.

I remember my brother came and visited me one time, flew in on a on a ski plane and we mushed around. It was in the winter, and he said, was during Reagan administration. Right, He's going like, how can you how can you sit out here? You know when the real world there's so many things going on?

Is sais?

I think this is the real world. That's how I felt, this is the real work. I didn't know that Reagan was president, right, I am no clue.

That's kind of what That's what That's what I'm getting at.

And I didn't care.

Yeah, it didn't affect you, no, And I mean maybe it did, but yeah it did.

It did?

It did in a macro way. Yeah, like it did in a macro.

Way, meaning you know, like like oil prices, right, you know, I mean like these things would come, these things would come for you.

Yeah, and I didn't buy any gas because I didn't have any motors.

But yeah, you know, like eventually it would be that you got a letter saying you got to move off the land. And that is in a macro sense, all this global stuff has impacted you. But that's like, but when you're out there, like that's the falls away. And just so you're a guy in the woods, Yeah you're not all pissed off about who's using what bathroom, not even guy guy in the woods, not even a little bit.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I've tried to bring it into I mean it. It was definitely a big part of of who I am and how I think about things, you know. You know that that all I don't know some of the some of the social issues that are so so much conflict right now. It's like I don't really care what somebody else does, you know, I just I just don't and or who somebody is, you know, I just I try to I try to treat people just like people, men and women here straight whatever, you know, I don't care.

So do you have do you have any regrets about the timeline that you spent how you how you spent your.

Life, not even a little bit. You know what was weird? All my friends at college when I said I'm gonna leave and I'm gonna go and live out, and was there.

Going, you can't do that.

You got to finish college.

You know you're going to ruin your life and everything.

Neither of my parents told me that at all. They I don't know what they thought I was getting into, but they didn't discourage me at all, not even a little bit.

And I find that surprising.

But do you still do like field work where you get to go spend extended period of time like out in the woods or.

Two falls ago was my last field project. Over the last few years, I've been losing my central vision. It's a genetic mutation that doesn't usually affect older folks, but it is with me. So I have a hard time right now. I'm not driving, I can't read a book. I can read it on a computer with high contrast and stuff. But that last project I was we were fishing for sheafish and that was big enough.

I could see it.

Yeah, But but I wouldn't drive a boat right right now, and and I wouldn't be the one taking measurements and things like that. And so my my functionality in the field has has declined. To the point where I won't. I'm not going to be going out anymore.

How old you know? Sixty six?

Give me sixty seven in a couple of weeks.

Give me a piece of marriage advice.

I don't really know. I just I just I treat Karen.

Like a princess. I have tried that yet, and I went wrong.

You start out with a toilet paper move right.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's princess treatment.

And the new cabin.

Oh, that's princess treatment.

Yeah, told me.

Yeah, no, I and and I just levered the pieces and and always have and always will.

Yeah, that's been your attitude. It's been my attitude. Yeah, you're not like, well, I'll see next year. I'll see the next year after that, how I feel. No, that's god, man, dude.

There's a lot of people that view of the world like that.

Man, I get it.

But are there any plans to live in the woods again?

Well, I don't know. I don't know. I don't think so. I mean, we kind of live on the outskirts. We have a we have a forty acre plot of land with nice birch and spruce on it where the latest cabin, big big scribe blog place that I built. Let's see, I started in I started that one in my late forties, finished it in.

Mid fifties. We've been living there for.

Gotta let those things settle, you know.

Yeah, So I love it. I love it. It takes a little work to man maintain. But got a great big sauna, baby wood fired sauna, which Dany helped get the stove for out of Wasilla. He and his boss went up and picked it up.

He's still feeding yourself with.

Uh, yeah, to some extent. Yeah, yeah, I went moose hunting this year, but we didn't. We didn't get anything,

And we just never saw a bull. Do you guys call? Yeah, we call, Can you can you rip a call for me? Okay?

So I have been around when cows call, So this is a real call. And and it is very similar to us to a cow, regular dairy cow ball.

That's it. Mm, that's your call. It's a cow call. Yeah, you don't do any of that crazy cow call like.

No, but they do that and and and so if it's a small bull, you want to do a cow call, guy's a big bull.

Hit me with your normal like, hey, get out there, you're you're there, Okay, all right, boys, we're gonna start hunting. Everybody be quiet. You're gonna do what hit me with it?

Well, if it's uh, if you're looking for a big bull, you know it's going to be a grunt.

No, no, no, I mean the bowl noise, I mean the cow noise. I did do it.

That's your main. That's your main. That's your main cow call that you're using.

That is okay. You never do the big long plaintive.

Like no, my buddy does this. Guy Scott McLean, he goes up there. He's got a fiberglass accelerator type thing and he'll do that and then do a couple of grunts afterwards, and it works.

Too, But you were saying cow call for small bulls, bullgrunt for bid.

So if you do a big grunt and it's a small bull, he doesn't want to be anywhere near a big bull, yep. And if we see a small bull around, we would always do cow calls and they'll come. And one of the beauties of this particular place is that you can see how these bulls are responding.

I mean, they could be even a mile away, and.

Then you'll see this this big antler's turn and they'll start walking your way. And if you do it too much, they'll they'll go away, And so you just want to let them do their thing.

Yeah, man, why do you don't worry? We're going to wrap up pretty quick here. But it's got a couple of technical questions for you. In your mind, why would a bull walk two miles to come and do like walk like he's just coming, there's not nothing in the world's going to stop him. And then all of a sudden he's like, but I'm going to lay down, then walk.

Away, lay down for a couple hours, then get up.

There and then get up go the other direction, Like what is he what is in his mind?

Well, I have no idea to tell you the truth. I I think that there are some bulls that get really damaged in fighting. Okay, we were watching there was a big bull and a little bowl, well a kind of a bullwinkle walking along this one open hillside at one point, and they were not responding to us at all, and the big bull would hit this little bowl every once in a while, and finally the little bowl turns around and nails him in the butt with his horns

So he's coming in and he's like, man, I'm not going in there and fighting. I'm gonna linger on the outside and see what's happening.

Or or he doesn't hear it again and and thinks it may be not there anymore.

I don't know. It's hard to get in their head, man, I know.

But I do know that if you if you grunt too much or if you call too much.

Turns them off. Turn off. Yet, you know you mentioned that that little bull hitting that big bull and ass. Me and Seth last year were messing around with We were messing around with a there's a company, Dave Smith Decoys, and he makes a posturing buck. So it's a buck that's kind of all bristled up, and you'll see other bucks come and you always think when you see bucks fighting, you associate them being antler to Antler. Nos knows, of course, right, yeah,

Yeah, every once in a while, these big bulls will lock their horns together, you see, get stuck. Yeah, And I've never seen it in practice, but I've seen those the sets of antlers that are put together. Department of Fishing Game in Fairbanks has one sticking hanging up right over there information thing and where people come in to get hunting license, fishing license and things like that. And there's also one in Eagle. This helicopter pilot had spotted

Yeah, you're still shooting two forty three when you go moose hunting.

You know what?

I changed to a six ' five creed more. And the reason I did that is so I could shoot copper. Because despite what people's views are with lead, lead in the oval of deer down in California is what almost put California condors over the edge. And when they found out how that was going down, because they were testing these condors and they had lead poisoning. But they're eating that stuff where all of that lead fragment is sitting and scavenging all over the mountains there, and.

The acid in their guts can break that lead down to where it becomes toxic, I suppose.

So I think that's what the issue is.

Yeah, but so so what I headshot with the with the two fourty three was one hundred grain hornity bullet, and bullets I think are everything. A lot of people say, oh, it's not big enough for Alaska game. They don't know what they're talking about. But that hundred grain horneday hunting bullet is it rolls back, it stays together, and uh and usually on a moose, if I shoot it just behind the shoulder, it'll be either in the ribs or the or the skin on the other side with a

And I didn't want to go.

There because there were people out there that shot twenty two two fifties and seventy grain bullets and they won't break the neck. They will kill a moose, and but they're they're you know, getting down there closer to the edge, and and the two forty three hundred grain that I was using will break any bone in the body, no matter what angle you're you're dealing with. Some people say, well, yeah, but you've got to be really precise you do with anything.

I like it. Uh, this was my last question for you. Yeah, then maybe the boy's got more questions for you too. But how do you feel what's your general attitude about protections of annwa are about the proposed Ambler.

Road pebble mind, pebble mint, pebble mind.

Like are you with the time you spent as more in kind of the equity you've built up in that place, do you encourage do you do you encourage that development around job creation or do you just want or do you have a view that you just want the wild to stay wild? Like? What what's your personal take as much as you're able to comment on that with your position at work?

Yeah, yeah, and sometimes I can't.

I did.

I was part of the the biological team on the e I S for the for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for the Coastal Plane and one of the big things that's that's an issue in that and they they put their opinion out I think it was last week on that the seis that was taking place. But there's no water out there, none of those rivers flow during the winter, and the oil production depends on that water a lot for ice roads, for the drilling, for the camps, everything.

I have no idea.

Some people have thought, well, maybe they'll melt snow, maybe they'll do a dece out plant, maybe they'll truck it. But you know, you can't truck water across an ice road, you'll break it up and then you'll be just continually doing that. So there are some some steep hurdles to doing that, but.

There are.

And the last time that there were sails there, it was this development group with Alaska Ada that bought most of the most of the plots. Two companies from somewhere else that didn't have any capacity to develop them bought the other two. I think just on a speculation that if one of the big companies decided to go in there, they would have to buy those leases from them or something, and that was what Ada was doing too.

Ada can't develop it either.

And so it's it's I mean, they've showed from over in Prudo that they can develop without the oil without ruining places. But they got all the water in the world over there, so I don't know how they're going to do it. I don't No big company bid on the last group, and I think they probably also thought that okay, this is this is too fast, you know, and we got to see what happens, and so they

Hurdles because it's money out of pocket right off the bat for them. Yeah, yeah, so you can't because of your involvement, You don't. You're not You're not in a position to say, like what you hope happens or what you wish would happen, except with that would compromise your.

So so I I don't. I don't really see it quite that way because I'm not. I'm not a player. And where whether it should or shouldn't understand and uh and uh, the the mining is is a little bit

But the news miner looked me up. I mean they've.

They've I write letters to the editor every once in a while. They know who I am, and they they put my affiliation with Fish and Wildlife Service, and I got a little bit of a spanking for that, even though I didn't do it, and I didn't put it on there myself. But Pebble is one of those that has not been approved, but they're going to as long as the minerals are there. Somebody's going to come back over and over and over until maybe the politics.

Are right to be able to do it.

But that's in Bristol Bay, right And it's it's on that past going over one side down to the New Shigak Great Big Fish River, the other side down to Lake Iliamna. The biggest of this Saki runs in all of Bristol Bay. Bristol Bay is booming, It's been booming for a long time. And and that is I mean, that fishery is booming. The fishery, yeah, and and.

It's kind of the hottest fishery in the globe. Yeah.

And and that Pebble mine is an acid mine, and it would require taking care of for thousands of years. How does that work?

That's pretty young.

I don't know how the hell that works myself. So I wrote a piece, you know, detailing that for the for the Mancho mine, the Mancho mine out in their Tetlan is is also an acid mine. And the state and the tribe have and the companies involved have have gotten through without having an eis done. And nobody knew it was an acid mine. And I had gotten some of the some of the documents from somebody that had gotten it through a public records thing and thought that

But well, has he been to Berkeley Pitt, I know, down the road here.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, and.

That one is gonna go on little outlass humanity. It will.

And that's like an example I always use, right because people are like, oh, well, technology has changed so much that you're thinking about this old stuff. I'm like, okay, well, so the Berkeley pit as an example where like a bird lands on it, it dies, right, is that taken care of? In your mind?

Like technology has made that?

Okay?

Like I don't, I don't understand the argument.

Right, Well, the state has a has a policy that if somebody is opening up the earth in an acid mind, that they have.

To put aside a huge bond.

That will take care of maintenance on you know, in in perpetuity, they call it. And I mean, I you know, I don't think that societies are gonna are gonna you know, there isn't an investment fund that you could guarantee that it's going to be true for very long.

So oh yeah.

And that's why like a lot of these companies, uh, they have working permits in the state that they're in, but they're not based there. They're based internationally. Yeah, to give them a little more protection, should they just so happen to default on that.

Yeah, yeah, And I think that's the way it is in Alaska.

Most of these big companies are Canadian or Australian or something.

Well, my kids were real little. I made the mistake one time of explaining to them this idea that the sun will burn out, you know, like the sun's kind of like in its midlife crisis right now, you know, and that as there'd be a day when the sun like it's not getting recharged. Yeah, you know, the Sun like theoretically will burn out and the solar system will die. And that messed them up because they couldn't They couldn't picture the geological time I was talking about, you know,

They like that version better they like that better than the sun going out.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, it's a hard thing to grapple with, even as an adult, when you're.

Talking about these mines. Yeah, a thousand year mind.

But yeah, and then you know, it's like you're stuck with the contradiction, right, Like we all got these phones and you know, titanium fucking coffee mugs when you're camping and.

Ship you know, I mean it's like it's you know, it's.

A mass man being alive is hard.

Well, that's true, yeah, yeah, situation. Yeah, but the responsibility of financial responsibility of the of the public to take care of these places after these mining companies take it. You know, I don't see the oil in the same way. You know, there's other issues with oil, but it's it's not you know, poisoning the landscape in that way.

So, man, I appreciate you coming down to talk. My brother was right, Danny is right. I should get you on the show. I think you've got to come back again someday though.

Oh I got so many questions. We just don't have any time.

Yeah, what a deal. So you're going from here to see that boy of years that you raised up in the woods, that yeah, yeah, I am doing that.

His daughter's so his his older daughter is.

His jewel j o U l e. Right. Oh you like the like the vight Yeah.

Like like like like energy.

Yeah, not like.

Some of its head some of his friends. Some of his friends were trying to talk him out of it. She'll have to tell teachers how to how to spell it and everything like that. And and I think it's a great name, but you may have to pay for it, so anyway. Yeah, and then Neviy, their younger daughter. She's wonderful too.

That's pretty name.

That uh n e with an accent v he with an accent. So that's a certain kind of a snow on high altitudes really in the mountains.

Yeah, sounds like you raised your boy, right Yeah. I hope so.

Well, Man, thanks so much for coming on. Man, it's been great.

Yeah, you bet.

Yeah, there's still a story or two to tell about.

I tell that man, you're an interesting guy. Man.

Yeah, we didn't even get into like fish like Oh I want to hear more about the dogs and just weird stuff.

Yeah. I wanted to get into staying real warm when it's forty below zero, no tent, but we'll have to you have to come back. Yeah, yeah, we did that. We come back. We come back on the show. Just for a technical technical, purely technical questions. Backwoods know how, Yeah, yeah, I do it. Yeah.

Just coordinate it with your next trip down to visit the family.

Yeah, well I definitely do that. It's like a family at Albuquerque too. Okay, and so one way or another.

Do little Rocky Mountain loop. Yeah. Yeah, you're going to run the spine of the Rockies all the way to the end. Yeah, that's what That's what it would be. Oh man, Well, thank you very much, thank you, thanks thanks for having me. This has been great. Appreciate it.

Yeah, well the hun day is over, and this time to pack it in. STEVEE got another and I got skunked again.

But that or I can mountain sunset this afternoon was pleasing. But it's my last dead campsule.

I'll see you next season. There's nothing alike the sunrise over mountains in the fall.

Now I hear distant bugle, these answering my call.

If we may see the warden, if we give him a reason.

But it's my last day in camp, so I'll see you next season. If I trall another I'll be back here again.

We'll find out in the summer when the lottery calls in.

My fingers crossed.

My friend all wish every.

One good luck.

I'm heading home then this evening, because it's my.

Last day in camp, and I'll see you next season.

I'll see you next season.